# Pascal's heat pump uses gas and sponge to beat 170-year-old tech > A startup has found a new way to make refrigerators and heat pumps 20% more efficient using carbon dioxide and a proprietary porous material. - Title: Pascal's heat pump uses gas and sponge to beat 170-year-old… - Summary: A startup has found a new way to make refrigerators and heat pumps 20% more efficient using carbon dioxide and a proprietary porous material. Pascal, a… - Keywords: pascal, adam slavney, jinyoung seo, heat pumps, refrigerants, solid state refrigeration, climate technology, startup funding, technology, startups, Pascal's, heat - Source: TechCrunch — https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/21/heat-pump-tech-is-170-years-old-pascal-thinks-its-time-for-an-update - Author: Tim De Chant - Published: 2026-10-21T13:30:00+00:00 - Read time: 2 min - Topics: pascal, adam slavney, jinyoung seo, heat pumps, refrigerants, solid state refrigeration, climate technology, startup funding, technology, startups ## A puzzle in the lab leads to a startup Adam Slavney and Jinyoung Seo were testing new materials for refrigerators and heat pumps when their experimental results came back different from expected.Within three months they had an inkling of why. > Why are these things different? What did we change? ## Pascal raises eight point five million dollars Slavney's startup Pascal, where he is co-founder and CEO and Seo is co-founder and CTO, recently raised eight point five million dollars in a follow-on to its seed round. ## The technology promises twenty percent better efficiency A refrigerator or heat pump using Pascal's material promises to be around twenty percent more efficient than existing models.Both heat pumps and refrigerators use the same basic technology. ## The refrigerant problem has lasted decades Scientists have searched for better refrigerants for almost as long as refrigerators have existed.Older gaseous refrigerants like Freon ate a hole in the ozone layer.Newer ones like R-134a are still extremely potent greenhouse gases. > We've been playing whack-a-mole with refrigerants for 35 years, 40 years. ## Solid state refrigerants offer a new path Solid state refrigerants cannot escape to the atmosphere, eliminating climate and ozone concerns.They work similarly to traditional refrigerants, giving off heat when squeezed and absorbing it when pressure is released. ## A chance discovery at Harvard led the way Slavney and colleagues at Harvard University were researching solid state refrigerants when they made a serendipitous discovery.They were doing high pressure measurements using gas.When they swapped to a different gas, the results were different. > We wanted to do some high-pressure measurements, and the instrument that we were using required us to use gas. ## Pascal compresses carbon dioxide into a sponge Rather than squeeze a solid block of material, Pascal's heat pumps compress carbon dioxide gas into a cartridge containing a proprietary sponge-like material. ## The material has been tested extensively Slavney said the material is very robust.Pascal has cycled it up to three hundred thousand times, equivalent to about a year of operation. > The material is very robust. ## Conventional systems could make it affordable Pascal uses conventional systems to operate its heat pumps, which Slavney said means they believe they can make it cheap and widespread. > We're using conventional systems to do it. That mean we believe we can make it cheap, and that means we can make it widespread. ## Key takeaway Pascal, a startup founded by Adam Slavney and Jinyoung Seo, has raised eight point five million dollars to commercialise a new heat pump design that promises twenty percent better efficiency than existing models.